Written by: Goemagog

Watched part of Hardball, with Chris Matthews and Tucker Carlson. Carlson was talking about 'big government conservatism' being unlike small government conservatism. He made the quite obvious observation that there is no real difference between Rudolph Giuliani and Hillary Clinton on any national issues. They're practically ideological carbon-copies. When queried about how the Republican Party will change in the next decade, he pointed out that it was nothing like it was a decade ago, but that there would be no 'realignment'. He's wrong on that last part.

Bush is a 'big government conservative' in the way that Clinton was a 'big government conservative'. He spends a lot on government programs, pretends that throwing money at federal agencies solves problems, and calls himself a conservative. My cat could call itself a dog, but it wouldn't really be one. Is Bush really a conservative? He's sort of one, just like Clinton was, sort of.

The fundamental divide today between conservatives and liberals in America is their view of socialism. All the other issues touted as being differences are usually differentiating along lines of practicality. Regional differences dominated on the civil rights movement, party lines or other ideologies meant almost nothing. Gun control is popular in urban areas, unpopular in rural areas.

The primary difference is socialism. How involved should the government in different aspects of people's lives. To leftists, government can only do wrong when in the hands of their enemies: political, imagined, or otherwise. Conservatives think that there are only two levels of government necessary, a local government to put out fires, arrest criminals, and pave the roads, and a federal government to defend the shores and deliver the mail. Most real people fall at some point in between.

As the Democratic Party falls more and more under the control of people who adored the Soviet Union, the Republican Party is expanding to the left, incorporating those pushed out of the DNC. For the first time since the Great Depression, registered Republicans equal or outnumber registered Democrats. As Republican leaders shift themselves further to the left to proclaim themselves 'centrist', they're leaving the Democrats with less and less ideological wiggle-room.

The Democratic Party is destroying itself by trying to outsocialize the new socialist Republicans. As the Republicans copy more and more DNC talking points, fringe groups like the khmer rouge Greens are claiming that the DNC is really shifting right and selling out. At the same time, small government conservatives are being increasingly alienated by a Republican administration that agrees with them on little outside of church.

Unless Hillary Clinton turns the DNC into a party hawking on defense, to the right of Europe on economic issues, and at least paying lip service to conservative positions on social issues (which she is trying to do in preparation for a presidential run), the DNC will implode as the suburban Democrats are forced into the Republican Party by Dean and Moore's Soviet Union Revival Tour.

Squeezing the Democrats ideological has left the Republicans spread too thin. How can a Republican President square talk of returning our money via tax cuts with a huge increase in spending of public money on private art? He can't, which is why most Republicans don't like to talk about it. He also can't fit defending our borders into his unrestricted immigration policy.

Democrats aren't sounding more like Republicans because Democrats tolerate very little dissent. For example, Democrats don't permit a pro-life Democrat access to any national venues. While half of Americans are pro-life, a substantial number of nationally prominant Republicans are not and side openly with the DNC. Increasingly, on this and other issues, as the Republicans shift further left, more and more Americans are being represented by neither party.

The political right has normally been the domain of fringe groups, mostly nazi groups who believe all leftist rhetoric but call themselves conservatives anyways (as juxtaposed by anarchists who should be for smaller government but usually identify with leftist large government rhetoric, and libertarians who are usually too stoned to know who is saying what). A political vaccuum is forming there, and if Hillary Clinton doesn't shift the DNC to the right, someone else will.

It's not just that there are 'big government conservatives' in the Republican Party, it's that the more 'big government' someone is in ideology, the more favorably they look on big governments. As Russia shifts back towards a repressive tyrannical government, it's important to point out just how EVIL the Soviet Union was, lest our politicians try to follow them down that path. We need a small-government party, not just to appease small-government conservatives, but to offset the slide to centralized state control of everything. As has been demostrated so violently in the past, any government with enough popular support for total control becomes murderously abusive towards it's own people, regardless of the governments official ideology. Stopping this is not only important for our liberty, but for our lives.

Goe, believes in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.